


207: Being a Prince

by harlequin (julie)



Series: Season 2 [7]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-08
Updated: 2009-11-08
Packaged: 2017-11-06 10:55:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 977
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/418062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/julie/pseuds/harlequin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A grieving guilt-stricken Merlin seeks comfort from Arthur.</p>
            </blockquote>





	207: Being a Prince

♦

Late that night, Merlin undressed the prince, dressed him again in fresh linens, and got him settled in the bed – and then without a pause, without asking or waiting for an invitation, he stripped off as well, and clambered in after him, got under the covers and pushed into the prince’s arms, pressed all of himself close against the other man, tucked his head in, and _clung_.

Arthur huffed a little, quietly, as if his default response would be to protest or taunt or tease. But instead he just huffed, and after a moment he settled in, and his arms held Merlin with a gentle kind of comfort.

They lay there awake for a while. Eventually Arthur murmured, ‘How’s Gaius?’

‘All right. Considering…’ Merlin replied, his voice rough and low. ‘I didn’t leave him till he fell asleep.’

‘With everything he’s gone through…’

‘He’s angry and hurting and exhausted.’

Arthur let out a breath that might have been a laugh if any of this left room for laughter. ‘I knew he’d be all right when my father returned from Gaius’s chambers… Merlin, you must never repeat this to anyone – but if an old man can still humble Uther Pendragon, King of Camelot then I hold no fears for him.’

Merlin pressed his face closer against Arthur’s chest, his mouth damp against the linen tunic and below it Arthur’s warm skin. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered.

Arthur’s hand came up to stroke Merlin’s hair, to push his fingers into his locks as if wanting to weave the two of them together. ‘Merlin…’

But from nowhere a great sob welled up within Merlin, and broke – and he gasped, ‘It was my fault! It was all my fault, and he would have died to protect me.’

‘How could it have been your fault?’

‘It was. It was. I’m an idiot. You always said so, and it’s true.’

‘Merlin!’ the prince said, losing the gentleness in exasperation. He tugged at Merlin’s hair until Merlin was forced to shift back and look at Arthur, and then the prince lifted his other hand to run a finger down round Merlin’s jawline to his chin. ‘Idiot,’ he said with a brusque kind of fondness. ‘It was almost completely random, that the witchfinder first accused you. Now we know something of his methods, I can guess at what happened. You were in the wrong place at the wrong time, when that stupid woman imagined she saw something in the wood–smoke. Then it all unfolded from there, with Aredian manipulating things every step of the way. He didn’t care who he accused – it was almost completely irrelevant to him. It didn’t have anything to do with _you_.’

‘I wish that were true,’ Merlin muttered.

Arthur pressed his mouth to Merlin’s, and murmured, ‘It’s true,’ against his lips.

‘Please,’ Merlin said with soft desperation. ‘Please, Arthur. I want to forget. For tonight. I don’t want to be me.’

Arthur shifted up onto an elbow, but leaning into him so they were still close. He was staring very directly at Merlin, a small frown drawing his brows together. ‘Merlin,’ he said after a while, ‘ _I_ want it to be you.’

‘Oh…’ he moaned, overwhelmed. Tears sprang to his eyes, though they didn’t fall.

Arthur bent down to kiss him, and the kiss quickly became an involved thing. After a moment, Arthur broke away, but only lifted far enough to wrench his tunic off over his head – and then they were in each other’s arms again, kissing, holding each other there in the dark, creating a haven of warmth between them, a time and a place in which nothing else mattered but Merlin and Arthur.

♦

They lay there pressed close together, Arthur slightly in the ascendant, thrusting with a slow lack of rhythm against each other’s hip. Arthur’s linen britches had been pushed down his thighs, and otherwise they were completely naked, open to each other, skin against all the sensitivities of skin, communicating in ways that were both obvious and subtle.

Arthur’s hand was trailing slowly down Merlin’s back, tracing the knots of bone, and eventually finding its way between the cleft of Merlin’s buttocks to press a fingerpad against his hole, teasingly not entering but only rubbing against him. Merlin moaned his need, and shifted his upper leg to hook around Arthur’s waist, exposing himself for the prince’s pleasure. For his own. ‘Please,’ he whispered.

And Arthur pressed a finger inside him, gently but surely, and they kept moving against each other like that, thrusting and shifting and kissing. Until it was no longer enough for either of them, and Arthur said, ‘D’you think we could –’

‘Anything,’ Merlin vowed. ‘Anything.’

‘Let’s try…’ Arthur said – and there was no one to tell them it was impossible, and Merlin had never felt more pliant in any sense of the word, he’d never felt more like he belonged _body heart mind soul_ to Arthur – and Arthur lifted his hip up off the bed, reached down to bring Merlin’s lower leg up under him, so that when he settled on his side again Merlin’s knees were crooked around either side of Arthur’s waist – and Merlin shifted back a little, curling up so that Arthur could push inside him where he belonged, and they almost made a circle together, meeting at their mouths as they kissed and their nethers as they fucked – and it was slow and gentle because it could be no other way, because neither of them wanted it any other way, at times they were almost still – but then at last Arthur shifted a hand down to where Merlin’s patient aching hardness waited, and gently triggered the most intense pleasure which rolled through him and then through Arthur and back and forth between them – and Arthur whispered again, ‘I want it to be _you_ , Merlin’ – and then they slept.

♦


End file.
